Extremism Bill Passes Round Two

New amendments to Russia’s extremist law passed a second reading yesterday. The amendments which are touted as targeting nationalists and skinheads has raised alarm among political oppositionists who see it as yet another weapon in the State’s arsenal in preparation for the 2008 Presidential Elections.

Among others things, the bill has measures to fine publishers who print material deemed “extremist” up to $4000. Explains the Moscow Times,

The publishing industry could also be affected by a new provision that was added to the bill before its second reading. The provision says that if media outlets refer to groups that have been banned for extremism, the outlets must mention the fact that those groups have been banned. The provision appears similar to an initiative last year to prevent media outlets from referring to the unregistered National Bolshevik Party.

Newspeak in its finest form.Such and such organization only exists as the State deems them.

The Duma’s actions come at the same time the Interior Ministry arrestedMaxim “Tesak” Martsinkevich after he and 20 others interrupted a debate between journalists Maxim Kononenko and Yulia Latynina at the Moscow bobo literati caf? Bilingua. Martinkevich is the leader of the neo-Nazi group Format 18.decribing the incident, Latynina told Kommersant, “It looked completely comical. Twenty brutes in camouflage came in at the height of the discussion, gave the Nazi salute and began to yell, We’ll cut up liberals.’ There were plenty of liberals around, but they didn’t cut anyone. Instead they left again like cowards.” Ilya Yashin added, “Tesak screamed that he plans to kill more Tajiks, blacks and liberals, then he and his companions stated chanting Nazi slogans.”

Can’t say I have any sympathy for Martsinkevich. For once I stand with the Interior Ministry.

Update: I forgot to add that Tesak was arrested under article 282, section 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “Incitement of Ethnic Strife with the Threat of the Use of Violence.” Conviction caries a prison sentence of 3-5 years.

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Yaroslav Kuzminov, the head of the Higher School of Economics (VShE) in Moscow received a disturbing letter from the Main Department of Internal Affairs (GUVD). The letter strongly recommended that the dean expel “politically unreliable” students, reportsNezavisimaya gazeta. “Politically unreliable” in the police’s opinion, are those youth who participated in last December’s Dissenters March sponsored by “Other Russia.” Six students from VShE’s Economics and Political Science departments were detained as they were leaving the Mayakovskaya metro station on their way to the demonstration. They never made it. Now the police recommends that the university consider expelling them. NG reports:

The most specific passage of the document is: “Participation in unsanctioned protests are one type of extreme activity and have a high level of social danger that demands security organs to take the adequate measures of reaction.” GUVD asked “to examine the question about removing conditions that contribute to the perpetration of offenses” and “to decide on the necessity to continue educating the aforementioned persons.” After this the security organs spelled out the appropriate measures.

This is not all. The heads of two departments, political science and economy, were ordered to answer an inquiry into “extremists” and to force the most frequent perpetrators to sign declaratory statements. The names of “said persons” in the letter were numerous.

How VShE will officially respond remains to be seen. They have to make an official declaration by 4 Feburary. In the meantime, Tatiana Chetvernina, the university’s vice dean gave this comment to Nezavisimaya:

“The letter that came from the police was a recommendation. They, of course, have the right to recommend what they think is necessary. Just like the university has the right to make a decision in accordance with the workings of laws on the property of the Higher School of Economics. And namely, if a student participates in meetings and groups and if he is not breaking the law, then that is the private affair of the students. We live in a free country and we have a working Constitution. If they break the law then the university will look into it. But, certainly, this question is connected not so much with dismissal as with violating law and order. Participating in groups has no relation to studying.”

Olga Kolesnikova, the school’s press secretary, was more blunt. “We can dismiss students if they are underachievers,” she said. “But if they study well, what right do we have to expel them? They are not criminal offenders, why should we forbid them from studying? In a word, we don’t let anyone get at our children.”

Of course, the letter harks back to both Tsarist and Soviet times when students were expelled for participating in political activities. Except this time, in the words of Oleg Shchebakov, a Moscow lawyer, where the parameters of acceptable political ideology are murky unlike in Soviet times the ideological lines were clearer. “The punished understood and clearly accepted that he lived in a rigidly ideological political system.” Now, he contents, “There is no general ideology! We complain about its absence all the time. It is simply undeveloped! So excuse me, what kind of ideology should these students use that someone has established? Today fascists are even permitted to go out into the streets. And no one singles them out . . . Evidently, they are not politically suspect in the opinion of the authorities.”

Update:

Moskovskii komsomoletsreports that similar letters were sent to other universities in Moscow. And apparently, the cops can’t even get their information straight when they send out such “recommendations.” Of the six students named in the letter to VShE, two don’t even study there.

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I don’t have much to add about the biographies of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I certainly won’t presume the cause or intent of their bombings of the Boston Marathon. Here we have two young men, the now deceased Tamerlan, 26, and captured and injured Dzhokhar, 19, both born in a Chechen diaspora community in the town of Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan. In 2001, they moved with their family to Dagestan, Russia. After a year or so, they came to the United States as war refugees. Like many American immigrants, the Tsarnaev family lived a working class life. Anzor, the father, worked as a mechanic. The mother, Zubeidat, was a cosmetologist. By most accounts, the Tsarnaev brothers lived a typical American male life: school, partying, sports, and alienation. As immigrants they lived an in-between existence. They had all the trappings of Americaness, but by their own admission, they felt not quite American. Eventually, both turned to radical Islam and developed an intense desire to reclaim their Chechen identity. At the moment, what dove them to violence is anyone’s guess.

There’s been a lot of debate about how much Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s “Checheness” figures into their bombing attack. Yet, what strikes me are the narratives of trauma that try to discern the meaning of “Chechnya” in the Tsarnaevs’ personal lives and, more often, as a implicit explanation for their violence. The discourse of trauma as a means to explain violence reveals how much psychological rationalizations imbue our public discourse. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I would caution against using trauma to find the rationality in the irrational. For me, trauma only works as an analytic to understand how the irrational becomes rational to the traumatized subject. So far, the trauma talk around the brothers Tsarnaev seeks to identify the former and not the latter.

After all, the logic goes, for a people that have suffered as much as the Chechens have, how could these young men not be traumatized? If the trauma isn’t located in them specifically, then surely there are reenacting that of their forebears? It is as if to be Chechen is to be traumatized. In fact, based on a lot of what has been written in the last few days, Chechens are only afforded two subject positions: sufferers and violent rebels. As Charles Clover wrote in the Financial Times, “Suffering and violent rebellion are twin themes of Chechnya’s national mythology.” Suffering and violent rebellion are also born of the same source: trauma.

I’m still trying to figure out what all this might mean. But I find something attractive and deeply troubling about the media discourse framing the Tsarnaevs as potential embodiments of traumatic legacies. I’m drawn toward it because it tries, however imperfectly, to understand the motives of the Other on his or her own terms. At the same time, I’m disturbed by all this trauma talk. First, it renders the Tsarnaevs as victims in a crime they perpetrated and therefore robbing the real victims of their victimhood. I’ve read many reader comments , often disturbing, expressing outrage at articles that normalize the Tsarnaevs. I don’t agree, but I begrudgingly understand their anger. Second, by placing trauma at the core of Chechen identity you inherently risk, as Sarah Kendzior writes, “treating Chechen ethnicity as the cause of the Boston violence.” You may humanize the Tsarnaevs, but you nevertheless erase their complexity. But giving trauma explanatory power for the Tsarnaevs’ crimes does more. It reduces Chechen identity writ large to the materialization of the mythic suffering and violent duplex, thus rendering Checheness to a perpetual state of abnormality.

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“Belligerent nationalism, xenophobia, appeals to violence and ethnic hatred have always been and will always be a time bomb under our sovereignty,” Putin told the heads of the Interior Ministry today. This is quite a frank admission on the part of Putin, who has often been accused using nationalism and xenophobia to the Kremlin’s political advantage.

Putin’s statement is rooted in reality. On Tuesday, the SOVA Center released new stats on hate crimes in Russia. Once again they show that racial violence is on the rise. SOVA recorded 67 deaths and 550 injured as a result of racism, xenophobia and nationalism, a 13 percent increase from 2006. The bulk of the victims were students and immigrants laborers from Africa, Asia, Jews, and even antifa activists.

It already appears that 2008 will be just as racially violent. SOVA has already recorded 39 victims of neo-Nazi violence for January. Thirteen of the 39 resulted in death. As SOVA head Galina Kozhevnikova told reporters, “Neo-Nazis are out not to beat up (their victims), but to kill.”

SOVA’s report comes just as police in Yakaterinburg have arrested a gang of eight skinhead youths suspected of committing 37 murders. I look forward to Buster’s promised elaboration on this case on his blog, Moscow Through Brown Eyes. In Moscow, the body of a Kyrgyz man was found dead with more than 30 stab wounds. Stabbings are the hallmark of skinheads.